Saberes e práticas tradicionais Pitaguary da cura comunitária: reflorestamento da saúde indígena a partir da sabedoria de troncos velhos da aldeia Monguba, território indígena Pitaguary.

Abstract

This dissertation tells the experience of an action-research project that sought to highlight traditional Pitaguary knowledge and their practices of community healing and health in the context of Monguba Community (Pacatuba/Ceará). This research problem was born by the demands shared by Pitaguary leaders and shamans and the request for a coalition with psychology and university to help facilitate the group of Troncos Velhos, grandfathers and grandmothers considered to be the guardians of Pitaguary memory and history. The research was carried out over two years in a qualitative and participatory way with a group of between ten and fifteen people over the age of sixty, most of them women, living in and belonging to the Pitaguary Indigenous Land. We used narrative methodologies that dialog with traditional indigenous orality, such as visits, testimonies and community sharing circles, as well as research and field diaries. The meanings, affections and creations produced in the cultivation and group process are reported in the chapter “Troncos Velhos”, dedicated to recording the importance of the oldest trees for the strengthening and re-existence of the Pitaguary people. In the chapter “Raízes”, the analysis highlights the healing powers of plants, art and spirituality, as well as the role of women in the production of community, daily and ancestral healing in the traditional territory of Aldeia Monguba. Their narratives, which we try to echo here, point to the relationship between ancestral healing knowledge and the inhabited territory and collective memory. Therefore, we have produced together transdisciplinary and counter-colonial reflections, in confluence with healers, prayers, raizeiras, mezinheiras, shamans, psychologists, anthropologists, historians, writers and indigenous thinkers to reforest the meanings and practices of indigenous mental health.